Monday, December 29, 2014

Treading on Tails in the Middle East – The Art of Shurooq Amin

“Will you walk a
little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,

There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.”

Lewis Carroll

The Syrian-Kuwait artist and poet Shurooq Amin has, through her art, become
the porpoise of the Middle East challenging the Islamists on their home turf. For as she has said “I address issues that move me or anger
me with a sense of injustice in some way: love in the Muslim world, child
marriages, gender issues, homosexuality, subjective censorship, political
stagnation, etc. I feel that it is a huge responsibility for me to tackle these
issues and open a dialogue in society with the hope of instigating social
change.”

She came to
international attention in 2012 when her show “It’s a Man’s World” was closed by the Kuwaiti authorities three
hours after opening to the public. It’s a
Man’s World was a follow up exhibition to her 2010 exhibitionSociety Girls; a pair of
exhibitions which explored gender disparities within Arab society.

Citing the pornographic and anti-Islamic nature of the work as
reasons for closing “It’s a Man’s World”, the authorities made Amin a cause célèbre for freedom of
expression advocates. As Amin told Sampsonia Way “In the past, I've had Islamists come to my show in anger
and huff-and-puff a little, but this is the first time they've blown my house
down, so to speak.”

Social media around the world sprang
to her defense including a
trending hashtag on Twitter, messages of support on Facebook and
thousands of supportive emails. Amin’s local, real world contemporaries had a
mixed reaction to the incident with many condemned her. About this reaction
Amin told the World
Policy Blog “Their logic was that I opened Pandora's Box for them!
They wanted to “let sleeping dogs lie,” as opposed to broadening minds and
enlightening generations and making a difference in society.”

Since then Amin
has had two solo exhibitions in Dubai. Popcornographic in 2013 which dealt with issues that are considered
taboo in the Middle East whilst We'll
Build This City on Art and Love explores issues related to “re-building
cities, minds, and beliefs that have been destroyed / deconstructed due to
corruption and dogmatic, hypocritical ideologies.”

For as Amin says “In
the Middle East, there are unspoken rules that order us to lie and hide our
true identity, because our society doesn't condone individuality—it condones
conformity.”

We'll Build
This City on Art and Love is currently on show at Ayyam’s London gallery until the 10th of January.

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The expat

Henry Bateman is an artist and writer currently living in Australia, a return home after living in the Philippines for 10 years. The Ex Expat, is his blog about the arts (often) and politics (sometimes).
His writing has been published by Crikey.com (Australia), Artslant (US), The Expat Travel & Lifestyle Magazine & The Expat Newspaper (both in the Philippines) and The Western Review (Australia).
He has also had seven solo exhibitions and has had his work shown in 15 group exhibitions as well as 35 theater commissions as a set designer and/or lighting designer.